Are panels that are wider than 16:9 a sustainable trend?

This is probably the only recent 21:9 TV thread on the LCd FORUM
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1417773/official-vizio-xvt3dxx0cm-21-9-cinemawide-owners-thread/150

What i meant is that there is very little interest in 21:9 TVs. Vizio seems to be the only one left who is making them.

Why bother. There are so many aspect ratios used in the content that there will always be black bars sometimes.

I doubt very much that the 21:9 "trend" will reach anywhere near 1% of the market in the next 5 years.

I hate the wide formats, even 2.35:1. I wish all HD content was 16:9. Why settle for a smaller image?

I don't mind occasionally watching ultra wide screen movies with black bars. However, since most program content is currently 16:9, you would be looking at side bars most of the time.



Ian

The wide formats are actually larger than 16:9, and that's the problem. Your 16:9 TV isn't big enough so you have to either chop the sides off, or shrink the image to fit.

With a 21:9 native display, 21:9 content (the largest format) fills the display, and the smaller 16:9 and 4:3 formats are pillarboxed. (or stretched, displayed side-by-side etc.)
It actually makes a lot more sense to do it this way, the only problem is that there are no anamorphic Blu-rays, so 21:9 content needs to be scaled up to 2560x1080.
Most of the time? The only time I have a 16:9 image is with my PC running on my TV, and a PC would fill the screen with a 21:9 display too. Most of the time I have letterboxing. Unfortunately none of the 21:9 displays on the market were all that good.

Perhaps there is hope with 4K OLED. If they choose to go with an upscaled image as they currently do, 4K should help minimize the artifacting from that.
But they could always go with 3840x1620 and use 1:1 mapping with letterboxed sources, scaling down 16:9 ones. (as they are less important on a 21:9 panel)


I don't really see much of a future for 21:9 displays though. Too bad they didn't make the switch to 21:9 being the standard when introducing 4K.

I'm pretty much the target demographic for these things and I'm still stuck at "curious-but-not-remotely-sold". Think of it basically as nothing more than a low-budget CIH solution and that's the entire appeal. Yeah, I'd go for a projector if I had the a) budget, and b) space--but having neither, these sets look good on paper. About 75% of the content I watch is wider than 16:9, and the other quarter is almost all 4:3, so I'm pretty much looking at black bars almost 100% of the time on a 16:9 display. My living room (and wife) really isn't going to allow any set that much larger than 50 inches, so there you go, projectors and screens would be silly for me. At that small size and my actual home viewing distance, problems from scaling should be unnoticeable. But at least so far, they all seem fairly half-assed in implementation. Anyway that's the point of view from someone who actually could want one of these things.

Chronoptimist: what is the ratio of people's eyes? Is it less than 21:9 or more?

Seems to me like the best ratio would be what most people's actual vision is. Is that true or not?

I'm not sure that actually matters. We have decades of 2.37:1 film content ("21:9") and the vast majority of films shot today are in that aspect ratio. The display should suit the aspect ratio of the content it's displaying.
I'm not sure why that's so surprising. When I get right up close to a 16:9 display, I lose the edges before the top and bottom leaves my field of vision. Probably explains why I never had a problem with 4:3 displays - in fact I am still quite fond of the 4:3 aspect ratio. I would much rather have a 4:3 notebook than the 16:9 or 16:10 displays manufacturers seem to be pushing these days.

They have a Vizio wide at Costco, all 16:9 broadcast content was stretched. Looked absolutely awful.


Ian
Edited by mailiang - 1/14/13 at 12:01pm

That may be so but also worth noting is Tom Norton's review, (HT Magazine Dec. issue) where geometric distortion and other oddities were an issue on many BDs with changing screen formats. Regardless of the wide control setting. Vizio is trying to iron out these kinks, however, at this point, I'm not holding my breath. When not watching scope content you still have to deal with side bars.



Ian
Edited by mailiang - 1/14/13 at 12:28pm

Seems like it was set wrong. You zoom with 21:9 content, and use pillarboxing for 16:9 or 4:3 content. Doesn't seem hard.
It only really gets problematic when you're watching titles like Tron Legacy where it switches between 21:9 and 16:9 several times throughout the film, but those titles are rare.
Right, but 90% or more of the content I watch is 21:9 native. (or could be, with my PC, as it has a flexible output) Are people complaining about pillarboxing on 4:3 content much these days?

The point is also that on a 21:9 panel, a 16:9 or 4:3 image does not get smaller, just narrower. Our perception of image size largely depends on the height of the image, more than the width.
On a 16:9 panel, 21:9 content appears to be smaller, because the height gets reduced. 4:3 content is fine, it just gets narrower.

In The Dark Knight Rises there is lots of aspect ratio switching, The Dark Knight Switcher Rises

I guess our viewing habits are different.



Fortunately, I rarely watch 4:3 or SD content on my HDTV's. I have my tube set for that.



Ian

It really comes down to whether you watch TV or Film content. With the exception of maybe one or two shows on Blu-ray, I don't watch TV at all.

I can't see 4K broadcast content happening any time soon, I expect it will all be films. So why not make 4K 21:9 native? (too late now of course)
The same thing could be said about 16:9 displays and HD rather than 4K.

I have some 4:3 Blu-rays though. They're definitely HD quality content, but were shot in that aspect ratio for whatever reason.
Yeah, there are a handful of titles that do it, but those two are the only ones I can think of. It's very rare.
With SD being 720x480 or 720x576, neither of which are 4:3 or 16:9 resolutions, it was a little more complicated. Somewhat more complicated when you're dealing with CRTs rather than flat panels too. There's only one way to display a 720p or 1080i/p signal correctly though, so it should basically be impossible to get it wrong with these 21:9 displays.
Edited by Chronoptimist - 1/14/13 at 4:28pm

All of the "issues" around the actual aspect ratio are nothing new to anyone with a projector/CIH system. Movies that switch aspect ratios shouldn't actually be a problem (if they're encoded properly...) A movie that switches between 2.35:1 and 4:3 is essentially a 2.35:1 movie all the way through--it just has big black pillars on sections of the movie. So set your system to treat it as a 2.35:1 film and it will just work[TM]. That said, there WERE a couple DVDs that were NOT encoded properly, but they looked wrong even if you didn't have a CIH system and AFAIK they were all fixed with a later reissue. i.e. imagine the section of the film that's supposed to look smaller actually looking bigger, that's the problem they had (example: Brainstorm DVD).

Yes, people's viewing habits differ and I don't think CIH holds a great deal of appeal for people who actually use the top and bottom pixels of their display most of the time. But it never held any appeal for them before these sets existed either. CIH is not new, these sets are just a way of introducing it to people who couldn't previously have it.

I think a real problem is that these sets never seem to have specs nearly as good as the flagship models, yet they're supposed to somehow appeal to cinephiles. Another problem is that the stretch method itself could use improving (both technical and UI-wise). It seems to me like someone had a bright idea for a niche product, but in an attempt to mainstream it, they've killed its chances of any success at all. Frankly I'd love a 21:9 4K plasma with top-of-the-line specs. These sets aren't anywhere near that ideal.
Edited by CatBus - 1/14/13 at 4:35pm

The problem is that before, you were using a projector with optics in front of the lens, many of which didn't quite get the aspect ratio correct, and most of which reduced image quality.

You have similar problems with current 21:9 flat panels because you are scaling 1920x810 up to 2560x1080 which is going to introduce artefacts and reduce sharpness.
Make it a standard, and you have a 1:1 mapped image without any of the image scaling problems.
Philips actually did make a flagship model with the 21:9 aspect ratio. Full array local dimming etc. The problem is that the price of it was ridiculous... and it was a Philips set.

This is why I wish they had standardized on 21:9 for 4K. I don't see much need for 16:9 4K, because most of the content produced for it is going to be films rather than broadcast. That's not to say you can't make a 4K 21:9 display, but if you make it a standard, then it's going to see much wider appeal.

I see what you did there

And yes, I agree on the technical points. Ideally I think the media should be have the film in its native aspect (no black bars encoded at all on any AR), and the player just reads this metadata and adds whatever matting is necessary to match its output resolution. Lacking that, however, this tech makes me curious. And a little disappointed.

The Dark Knight also has aspect ratio switching in it, not as much as DKR though. Both DK and DKR are Christopher Nolan movies as you probably know

In the movie Ben-Hur what kind of ratio would you need to see all the chariots in the chariot race?

What if they entire frame or 90% of it is black?

For the 2010 TV version, 1.78:1 probably. Which is closer to the aspect ratio of our eyes.